This chapter provides a general introduction to, and overview of, the content and structure of the book, using the cases of Mary Bell and of the killers of James Bulger to illustrate its approach. It ...
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This chapter provides a general introduction to, and overview of, the content and structure of the book, using the cases of Mary Bell and of the killers of James Bulger to illustrate its approach. It discusses the definition, use and application of the term “child” throughout. It then introduces the concept of criminal capacity as it is to be applied and emphasises its significance. It places the discussion of the issue of youth offending in the context of legal history, looking at Scottish legal writing dating from the 17th century onwards. The central theme of the paradox of the (simultaneous) child/criminal is also identifiedLess

Introduction

Claire McDiarmid

Published in print: 2007-08-01

This chapter provides a general introduction to, and overview of, the content and structure of the book, using the cases of Mary Bell and of the killers of James Bulger to illustrate its approach. It discusses the definition, use and application of the term “child” throughout. It then introduces the concept of criminal capacity as it is to be applied and emphasises its significance. It places the discussion of the issue of youth offending in the context of legal history, looking at Scottish legal writing dating from the 17th century onwards. The central theme of the paradox of the (simultaneous) child/criminal is also identified

Since WWII, dignity has become an important legal and moral value in almost all of the instruments of human rights and international law, and has no been incorporated into constitutions as a ...
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Since WWII, dignity has become an important legal and moral value in almost all of the instruments of human rights and international law, and has no been incorporated into constitutions as a foundational value and ideal, including in the constitution of South Africa. Within South African jurisprudence and critical theory there has long been a disagreement between whether or not uBuntu could simply be encompassed in the ideal of dignity. This chapter argues that uBuntu and dignity can and should be distinguished, it tries to delineate their difference, and yet also defends a position that uBuntu is able to defend the European ideal of dignity, even as it goes beyond it in its demands for economic transformation.Less

Is There a Difference That Makes a Difference between Dignity and uBuntu?

Drucilla Cornell

Published in print: 2014-04-03

Since WWII, dignity has become an important legal and moral value in almost all of the instruments of human rights and international law, and has no been incorporated into constitutions as a foundational value and ideal, including in the constitution of South Africa. Within South African jurisprudence and critical theory there has long been a disagreement between whether or not uBuntu could simply be encompassed in the ideal of dignity. This chapter argues that uBuntu and dignity can and should be distinguished, it tries to delineate their difference, and yet also defends a position that uBuntu is able to defend the European ideal of dignity, even as it goes beyond it in its demands for economic transformation.

This essay connects the life of John Codman Ropes, lawyer, historian, and founder of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, with the society's purposes and the type of Civil War histories ...
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This essay connects the life of John Codman Ropes, lawyer, historian, and founder of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, with the society's purposes and the type of Civil War histories it created between 1876 and 1918. Ropes, although unable to enlist because of physical disability, was nevertheless shaken by a war that killed his brother and many Harvard classmates. Ropes honored the dead through his devotion to “true History.” Applying the methodology of the law, guided the society in crafting narratives of the war that would be stripped of partisanship, sectionalism, or apology. Ropes’s postwar life and that of the society he founded are best understood not as abstractions of the war’s transformation of a social class but rather how individuals confronted loss and its aftermath.Less

John Codman Ropes : A Lawyer’s Historian

Richard F. Miller

Published in print: 2015-04-01

This essay connects the life of John Codman Ropes, lawyer, historian, and founder of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, with the society's purposes and the type of Civil War histories it created between 1876 and 1918. Ropes, although unable to enlist because of physical disability, was nevertheless shaken by a war that killed his brother and many Harvard classmates. Ropes honored the dead through his devotion to “true History.” Applying the methodology of the law, guided the society in crafting narratives of the war that would be stripped of partisanship, sectionalism, or apology. Ropes’s postwar life and that of the society he founded are best understood not as abstractions of the war’s transformation of a social class but rather how individuals confronted loss and its aftermath.

Lord Kames (Henry Home, 1696–1782) is one of the best known figures of the Scottish Enlightenment by name, and one of the least known in relation to his actual writings. He was a Scottish judge, ...
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Lord Kames (Henry Home, 1696–1782) is one of the best known figures of the Scottish Enlightenment by name, and one of the least known in relation to his actual writings. He was a Scottish judge, jurist, philosopher of legal history, moral philosopher, reformer. He was the example of an erudite Enlightenment man and uomo universale. The purpose of this book is to further the understanding of Lord Kames's thought, his thought processes, his lines of argument, and, most importantly, his conceptual connections of the areas of aesthetics, moral philosophy, social theory (including political philosophy and anthropology), and law. The book seeks to extract the lines of thought between aesthetics, moral philosophy, legal history and law, disciplines which Kames regards as being placed on one underlying conceptual framework. Previous monographs about Kames appeared over forty years ago and were mostly biographies. The rather few specialist studies which have dealt with Kames in detail have essentially interpreted his works in isolation and within one discipline. The present book tries to do justice to the universalist and multi-disciplinary approach of the polymath Lord Kames. It shows Kames's own influences and his underlying framework of moral philosophy which connects aesthetics, political philosophy and ideas of commerce, anthropology, legal history, property, equity and criminal law.Less

Lord Kames : Legal and Social Theorist

Andreas Rahmatian

Published in print: 2015-06-01

Lord Kames (Henry Home, 1696–1782) is one of the best known figures of the Scottish Enlightenment by name, and one of the least known in relation to his actual writings. He was a Scottish judge, jurist, philosopher of legal history, moral philosopher, reformer. He was the example of an erudite Enlightenment man and uomo universale. The purpose of this book is to further the understanding of Lord Kames's thought, his thought processes, his lines of argument, and, most importantly, his conceptual connections of the areas of aesthetics, moral philosophy, social theory (including political philosophy and anthropology), and law. The book seeks to extract the lines of thought between aesthetics, moral philosophy, legal history and law, disciplines which Kames regards as being placed on one underlying conceptual framework. Previous monographs about Kames appeared over forty years ago and were mostly biographies. The rather few specialist studies which have dealt with Kames in detail have essentially interpreted his works in isolation and within one discipline. The present book tries to do justice to the universalist and multi-disciplinary approach of the polymath Lord Kames. It shows Kames's own influences and his underlying framework of moral philosophy which connects aesthetics, political philosophy and ideas of commerce, anthropology, legal history, property, equity and criminal law.

Legal humanism has become deeply entrenched in most modern works on European legal history from the seventeenth century onwards and has been accepted with such blind faith by many modern scholars ...
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Legal humanism has become deeply entrenched in most modern works on European legal history from the seventeenth century onwards and has been accepted with such blind faith by many modern scholars that few have challenged it. The consequence is that scholars who have accepted the traditional view have used it to substantiate larger claims about the death of Roman law, the separation between the golden age of a pan-European medieval ius commune and the fragmented reception of Roman law into the nation states of Europe, and the relevance of ‘dogmatic’ Roman law as opposed to ‘antiquarian’ Roman law.Less

Reassessing Legal Humanism and its Claims : Petere Fontes?

Published in print: 2016-01-01

Legal humanism has become deeply entrenched in most modern works on European legal history from the seventeenth century onwards and has been accepted with such blind faith by many modern scholars that few have challenged it. The consequence is that scholars who have accepted the traditional view have used it to substantiate larger claims about the death of Roman law, the separation between the golden age of a pan-European medieval ius commune and the fragmented reception of Roman law into the nation states of Europe, and the relevance of ‘dogmatic’ Roman law as opposed to ‘antiquarian’ Roman law.